Rice the gracious hostess of Bush's supper of contrition

By Dana Milbank in Washington

March 1, 2007 — 11.00am

ON JANUARY 11 the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, sat at the witness table in Hearing Room 106 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building explaining why those who talked about engagement with Syria and Iran were all "wet". "That's not diplomacy - that's extortion," she said.

On Tuesday Rice returned to the same witness table in the same hearing room.

"I'm pleased to inform you that the Iraqis are launching a new diplomatic initiative, which we are going to fully support," she announced cheerfully.

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And guess who's coming to dinner? Iran and Syria.

"The Government of Iraq is preparing for an expanded neighbours meeting," Rice said, as if announcing a block party. "Invitees would include Iraq's immediate neighbours."

It was as high-profile a reversal as the Bush Administration had ever made - and it came too suddenly for the appropriations committee chairman, Robert Byrd, a Democratic senator who did not have time to update his opening statement. "There is," he thundered from the dais, "no plan for diplomacy."

When the Iraq Study Group proposed in December talking with Iran and Syria - and politicians from both parties seconded the recommendation - the Administration summarily dismissed the idea. But on Tuesday Rice was an eager hostess awaiting the RSVPs from Tehran and Damascus.

"Iraq has invited the Syrians and the Iranians; I don't know if they've accepted," she told the committee.

"But we certainly will be there."

For an administration that has long been criticised for arrogance and intransigence on Iraq Tuesday was a rare day of contrition.

It began with Mike McConnell, the new national intelligence director, volunteering to the Senate armed services committee the spy agencies' grim conclusion: "The current security and political trends in Iraq are moving in a negative direction."

Next came the new Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, who provided more sombre judgements on Iraq. "We face, in essence, four different wars," he said, "and the national intelligence estimate would add a fifth."

Finally, there was Rice, freely admitting that the Administration, in talking to Iran and Syria, was responding to its congressional critics.

"It is an important dimension that many in the Senate and in the Congress have brought to our attention," Rice said.

"That is a good development," the Republican senator Arlen Specter responded.

"I want just to thank you and others," the contrite Rice answered. "We've had conversations about the importance of doing this, and we've listened."

Senator Lamar Alexander, also a Republican, detected a second wind for the recommendations offered bythe Iraq Study Group. He wondered why the Administration was only now "backing into some consistency with the Iraq Study Group".